8 Things We Love About CiviCRM

We've recently launched a new site for our long time client OUCH(uk) which uses a combination of Drupal and CiviCRM, a massively functional database system, which provides the foundation for them to take their organisation to the next level.

What is CiviCRM?

So, what is CiviCRM and what makes it so great? According to civicrm.org, it is a "web-based, open source, Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) software geared toward meeting the needs of non-profit and other civic-sector organizations". In other words, it's a database that runs large organisations and captures every aspect of every inter-personal transaction. Users include Amnesty International, so it has some large scale clout.

1. Manage Members
Ouch(UK) exists for the benefit of its members. It's dedicated to helping them with the very debilitating condition of Cluster Headaches. Knowing about their members is the most vital part of the organisation. Civi can track when they joined, when they should renew, what relationships they have with other members, address details, personal details. Everything you need to track is tracked.

2. Manage Contacts
The same applies to any individual, such as a medical professional or journalist, that has any contact with the organisation. Add them to the system as a contact and build up a pool of resources.

3. Get More Donations
CiviCRM comes with payment systems built in - straight out of the box you can use Paypal and with a little bit of effort, SagePay. The same payment system powers the membership functionality - and both of them help with...

4. Gift Aid
It's hard to over-estimate the importance of Gift Aid, particularly to small charities - and without a good system for keeping track of payments and eligibility it can be a real headache (no pun intended). Civi has all of this built in, which means fewer headaches for OUCH. That pun was deliberate.

5. Events
We hadn't initially planned on using Civi to organize OUCH(uk) events, but it's been so easy to set up that we couldn't not! From early bird discounts to a map of the event location, it's all sorted out for you. And every event gets its own...

6. Social Links
Social links have really helped OUCH to start to make links between the website and their Facebook page.

7. Continual development
One of the great things about open source projects is their continual improvement and development. Whatever snags you might face are also being faced by thousands of other people around the globe - and with open source, we all pull together and pool our resources. If we can fix our problem we can offer the solution back to the community - where somebody else can take our fix and improve upon it.

8. Free
All that and there's no license fee, what could be better?

Powerful System for any Charity

Civi is a phenomenal system with the power to help any charity manage that most valuable of commodities - information. Get in touch if you think we could help you.